Gender and its effect on language acquisition

ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES 
VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 5 | 2021 
ISSN: 2181-1385 
Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF) 2021: 5.723 
 
Academic Research, Uzbekistan 219 www.ares.uz 
sex as physiological, and gender as a cultural or social construct. According to this 
distinction, 
sex 
refers to biological maleness and femaleness, or the physiological, 
functional, anatomical differences that distinguish men and women, whereas 
gender 
refers to the traits assigned to a sex – what maleness and femaleness stand for – 
within different societies and cultures. Gender can then be seen as a broader and 
complex term. The many different life experiences of women and men cannot be 
simply explained by biological differences between the sexes. 
 
DISCUSSION 
Current theories of gender recognize not only that behaving as men or women 
within a society will vary from one situation to the next, from one social grouping or 
community to another, and according to different goals, aims, and interests, but also 
that people are active agents involved in their own ‘gendering’ or ‘doing gender’.
The distinction between sex and gender is significant and political. Biological 
explanations of socially constructed differences between men and women are often 
used to justify male superiorities or reassert traditional family and gender roles. For 
example, women’s natural role is important like mothers and nurturers.
As well as, 
theorizations of the difference between sex and gender have developed in recent 
years. 
Cultural differences, such as the pressure (intentional or not) on girls to ‘be 
nice’ and polite and on boys to be strong and competitive, are likely to lead to the 
learning of different interaction styles and the adoption of different linguistic choices 
by girls and by boys. Some of these choices, and the related broader gender 
ideologies, often work to disadvantage girls and women. 
The notion of gender differences is still important, but instead of assumptions 
about 
a priori 
binary differences, current approaches focus on the difference gender 
makes. Differences are also relevant in the sense that it is important to examine how 
we talk about them and what we do with them. 
Educational settings are important settings for the construction of gender and 
the production of a range of gendered norms, practices, relations, representations, and 
identities. According to R. Lakoff researches, in terms of foreign language 
acquisition, findings are inconsistent and depend on different factors, such as: 
- the setting where learners are exposed to a new language;
- the motivation for learning a foreign language; 
- the learners’ perceptions and attitudes towards the language, 
- the language teacher, and the language learning materials and activities (2). 

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